Identifying and Advocating Best Practices in the Criminal Justice System. A Texas-Centric Examination of Current Conditions, Reform Initiatives, and Emerging Issues with a Special Emphasis on Capital Punishment.

Wednesday, 20 March 2013

Maryland Repeal Reverberations

Maryland lawmakers voted this month to repeal the state's death
penalty. If Gov. Martin O'Malley signs the bill, as promised, Maryland
will be the sixth state to abolish the death penalty in six years - and
will join 17 other states in doing away with a punishment fraught with
errors and racial disparity.

Maryland's history of crime and punishment is worth noting. By 1999,
O'Malley said, "Baltimore had become the most violent and drug-addicted
city in America." The death penalty was being used then, but it had done
nothing to stop decades of rising violence. In fact, the death penalty
was imposed so haphazardly that between 1995 and 2007, Maryland's
reversal rate for death sentences was 80 percent.

What has brought down violent crime? "Effective policing, expanded
drug treatment, smarter strategies, new technologies to solve crime and
target repeat violent offenders," O'Malley wrote in a column for
Politico.

And:

Executions serve society's basest instincts: fear, revenge,
retribution. They don't make us safer. They cost three times as much as a
life sentence.

Maryland has pointed the way to a more just system. Virginia would be wise to follow.

Maryland’s Democratic Governor Martin O’Malley will soon sign
legislation passed by the state’s Senate and House of Delegates that
will make it the 18th state to abolish the death penalty.

On Monday’s NOW with Alex Wagner, the panel discussed the current
debate surrounding capital punishment, which has largely focused on
issues of cost.

A 2008 study
by The urban Institute found that in Maryland, cases where the death
penalty was pursued by prosecutors ended up costing taxpayers three
times as much as cases seeking life without the possibility of parole.

The number of Americans supporting the death penalty, while still a majority, has also been in decline. According to Gallup,
63% of American support the death penalty, while 32% are opposed.
However, support for capital punishment has declined markedly from a
high of 80% in 1994.

The waning support has played itself out on the state level as five
states–Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico and New York–have
all abolished capital punishment in the last six years.

David Protess posts, "Executing the Death Penalty," at Huffington Post. He's President of the Chicago Innocence Project, and a regular poster at HuffPo.

In the spring of 1999, a French journalist was in Chicago to write
about the latest death row exoneration and, as our lunch concluded, made
a stunningly bold prediction. "Your country will abolish capital
punishment in the next 25 years," she declared.

Laughing, I reminded her that public support for the death penalty
was at an all-time high, capital punishment was the law in 38 states and
most of them were routinely performing executions.

She waved her hand dismissively, pointing out that her country had
been beheading prisoners since the French Revolution until, for economic
and moral reasons, the death penalty gradually fell into disuse in the
1970s and was finally abolished. Same thing had happened throughout
Europe. "Your country may have a cowboy mentality," she concluded, " but
even cowboys don't like being on the wrong side of history."

I thought of our conversation on Friday when I learned that Maryland will become the first state south of the Mason-Dixon line to ban capital punishment.

Having won approval in both chambers of Maryland's General Assembly, a
landmark bill to abolish the state's death penalty awaits only Gov. Martin O'Malley's
signature before becoming law. It is a tremendous political and moral
victory for Mr. O'Malley, a long-time opponent of capital punishment who
campaigned for a repeal during his first term only to come up short.

That leaves only one major item of unfinished business on his agenda
regarding the issue: Commuting the sentences of the five men currently
on Maryland's death row to life imprisonment without the possibility of
parole. The governor must use the historic opportunity presented by the
abolition of capital punishment in Maryland to unequivocally put an end
to the last vestiges of this barbaric practice in the state's prisons.

The bill abolishing Maryland's death penalty that the governor is
expected to sign does not apply retroactively to defendants who were
sentenced to be executed while the old statute was still in effect. Thus
although Mr. O'Malley has presided over a long-term de facto moratorium
on capital punishment — there have been no executions in the state
since 2005 — the five men on its death row remain condemned to die, and
there is no assurance that a future Maryland governor wouldn't allow
their sentences to be carried out. That would make a mockery of the
religious, moral and practical arguments against the death penalty that
finally led to its abolition.

New Hampshire death penalty opponents are lauding
the Maryland legislature's vote to repeal the death penalty and vow an
intense campaign to abolish capital punishment here during the 2014
session.

Maryland's House of Delegates passed
the repeal legislation Friday and its Senate voted in favor of repeal
last week. Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley has pledged to sign it into
law.

New Hampshire Democratic Rep. Renny Cushing of
Hampton — whose father was murdered — said he and Manchester Republican
Rep. Steve Vaillancourt will sponsor legislation to abolish the death
penalty next session.

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The StandDown Texas Project

The StandDown Texas Project was organized in 2000 to advocate a moratorium on executions and a state-sponsored review of Texas' application of the death penalty.
To stand down is to go off duty temporarily, especially to review safety procedures.

Steve Hall

Project Director Steve Hall was chief of staff to the Attorney General of Texas from 1983-1991; he was an administrator of the Texas Resource Center from 1993-1995. He has worked for the U.S. Congress and several Texas legislators. Hall is a former journalist.